| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White: it into the darkness that ascended to swallow it.
"Who was singing that song?" he cried harshly. Nobody answered.
"Who was that singing?" he demanded again.
By this time I had recovered from my first astonishment.
"I was singing," said I.
Another match was instantly lit and thrust into my very face. I
underwent the fierce scrutiny of an instant, then the taper was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: substance of our explanation was that she had kept so quiet.
The poor lady on the whole had had reason for doing so.
But it was a revelation to us that it was possible to keep
so quiet as that in the latter half of the nineteenth century--
the age of newspapers and telegrams and photographs and interviewers.
And she had taken no great trouble about it either:
she had not hidden herself away in an undiscoverable hole;
she had boldly settled down in a city of exhibition.
The only secret of her safety that we could perceive was that
Venice contained so many curiosities that were greater than she.
And then accident had somehow favored her, as was shown
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: "And may I remind you that slander is an offense punishable by law?"
"And is this the state of a wise man?" asked the beard, looking at
the sky, "to threaten his friend for speaking truth?"
"Now he's even praying! I can't believe this!"
"'We cannot see around corners,' says Germulphius, 'so what is left
to the man who refuses to see in a straight line?'"
"Someone like your wife," answered the glasses. "No doubt by now
she's found twelve more insupportably ridiculous assertions in your
paper on aperceptual phenomenalism."
"Well, at least my wife reads my papers. At least my wife can read."
"My wife is an avid reader of literature."
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